by MJ Rodgers
Esther snapped her head in Whitney’s direction. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just so…I’m quite stunned.”
“That’s perfectly understandable,” Whitney said, smiling.
“Dr. Rubin, how did you know Patrice?” Adam asked. Adam watched as Esther Rubin’s eyes suddenly squinted again as they turned toward him.
“Why do you ask, Mr. Justice?”
“Because I’d like to know who Patrice was to you and you to her.”
Esther said nothing, her shoulders once again tensing.
“It will help Mr. Justice to understand your relationship to Patrice when he goes to court to represent your interests in the estate,” Whitney explained.
“Go to court?” Esther repeated in a startled voice as she turned toward Whitney.
“The will is to be probated in court, Dr. Rubin. And with this kind of sum at stake, there are bound to be a lot of questions. The thirty-million-dollar figure was announced on television last night.”
Esther Rubin’s face paled. “Were our names mentioned?”
“None of the beneficiaries were mentioned,” Whitney said. “But it’s just a matter of time. The will’s been filed. Once the case comes up on the calendar—”
“No,” Esther breathed on a long exhale of breath. “Please, no.”
“What’s wrong, Dr. Rubin?” Whitney asked, alarm in her voice as she set her cup down and leaned toward the woman.
Adam, too, was becoming concerned at the growing pallor and despair on Esther’s face.
“I know Patrice meant well by her bequest,” Esther began. “But you must stop this. We don’t want the money.”
“You don’t want ten million dollars?” Adam asked.
“I’m throwing myself on your mercy, Mr. Justice. Please, take our names off the will. Please.”
“That’s not possible,” Adam said, more than surprised. It wasn’t often he met someone who was so ready to reject a fortune.
“What is the problem, Dr. Rubin?” Whitney asked. “Why are you so determined to turn down this money?”
“I can’t tell you. I…I’m sorry. Maybe it would be best if you left now. I have to…to call my husband.”
“Dr. Rubin,” Whitney said, “Mr. Justice is sworn to represent your interests in this matter. He’s on your side. Please, don’t send us away. Let us help you.”
Esther Rubin sighed and slumped back against the love seat. “What if Jacob and I just refuse the money?” she asked.
“Your refusal would undoubtedly make even more headlines than your acceptance,” Adam said solemnly.
“Mr. Justice is right,” Whitney added. “You’d be swamped by reporters wanting to know why. And if you refused to tell them, then that would just mean they would go digging for the answer.”
“Then it’s…hopeless,” Esther said on another long sigh.
“Maybe not,” Whitney said. “Tell us what’s troubling you, Esther.”
Whitney’s voice had become very soft and gentle as she switched to Dr. Rubin’s first name. The look on her face matched her tone. Adam could see Esther reacting to both.
“Do I dare?” she asked, although the question seemed directed mostly to herself.
“Esther, we don’t want to invade your privacy,” Whitney said. “But we can’t help unless we know.”
Esther chewed the inside of her cheek. “There is so much at stake.”
“I can see that, Esther,” Whitney said, resting her hand on the woman’s arm.
“Where would I start?” Esther asked no one but herself.
“Where it’s comfortable,” Whitney answered anyway.
Esther studied Whitney for a moment and nodded, seemingly reassured by what she heard and saw. “At the beginning, then,” she said.
The air in the room seemed to still as Esther leaned forward and rested her hands on her knees. Adam watched as the light in her dark eyes focused on images far beyond the confines of those in her viewing range.
“Jacob and I met in medical school. We were married the same day we were graduated. Seven years later we became reconciled to the fact that we weren’t going to be blessed with children. Still, we had our professions as psychiatrists. And each other. We were happy. Then one night we came home and there he was, all tangled up in my rosebushes.”
“He? Who?” Whitney asked”Joe,” Esther said, a small smile circling her lips. “He was nine years old. Thin. Cold. Tired. Hungry. Starving. And so very scared. He’d gotten caught in my rose trellis when he’d climbed up to try to eat the birdseed in a feeder at its top. The trellis had split and he had fallen through, trapping his leg in the lattice.
“Jacob and I untangled him and brought him inside. He was shaking like a little leaf. I bandaged his hurt leg. Gave him some hot food. Poor little tyke ate like he hadn’t had any food in days. As it turned out, he hadn’t.
“He wouldn’t speak. At first we weren’t sure he even could. I was determined to find out. I stayed home with him the next week while Jacob went off to take care of our patients.
“Joe followed me around like a puppy, helping me around the house, cutting the lawn, pruning the bushes. He was so eager to please and so grateful for a kind word. It took all seven days before he told me his name. His age came next. And gradually the rest.
“As practicing psychiatrists, Jacob and I had dealt with the painful adult trauma that results from childhood abuse. But we had never met an abused child in the flesh before. It was quite an awful experience to look into Joe’s sad eyes while he spoke of the atrocities his parents had committed and pointed to the evidence on his scarred little body. Jacob and I, we…well, we were so angry and sad and…we just knew we had to help.
“We contacted the authorities and reported the abuse. They contacted his parents. They claimed Joe was a discipline problem. He was placed right back in their hands.”
“The authorities didn’t believe the boy?” Whitney asked.
“This was twenty-seven years ago, Ms. West. Joe was just a runaway to them. And their job was to see that runaways were returned home to their parents. Sadly it can happen that way today, too, particularly with abuses that are hard to prove.”
“What happened to Joe?” Whitney asked.
“He escaped a second time. He didn’t come to us. Not that I blamed him. However good our intentions, we had been instrumental in his being returned to those monsters. The authorities found him several months later in an alley. He’d been living off the streets. He was so malnourished that he’d caught pneumonia and just…died.”
“Oh, no,” Whitney said.
A tear escaped from Esther’s eye. “It still makes me cry, Ms. West. I’m sorry.”
Adam watched as Whitney put her arm around the older woman and hugged her. Her brandy eyes were full and beginning to overflow. She reached into her jacket pocket and produced tissue for them both.
“It’s okay, Esther,” Whitney said. “It makes me cry, too. Call me Whitney.”
Esther looked into Whitney’s face and smiled as she dabbed at her eyes.
“I found my second runaway a couple of months later,” she began again after a moment. “Her name was Gina and she was thirteen. She was trying to talk the manager of a theater into hiring her as an usherette. He knew the identification card she had shown him that said she was eighteen was false. He went to his office. I heard him calling the police to come pick her up.
“I got her away before they showed. I told her right off I knew she was a runaway. It was her eyes, you see. She had that same sad, scared look that Joe had had. I told her she could stay with Jacob and me for as long as she liked, and we wouldn’t ask any questions.
“She stayed. But she was jumpy. And leery. I found blankets missing from the linen closet, food from the kitchen. One night, after she’d been with us a few days, I peeked into her bedroom just to make sure she was all right and found her gone.”
“She just left? Without a word?” Whitney asked.
“I was so frightened and
worried for her. A girl that young, alone on the city streets at night. I prayed that she would be all right. I prayed that she would come back to us.”
“Did she?”
“The next morning she came down to breakfast as though nothing had happened. I was stunned and enormously relieved. The next night I watched. Just as soon as she thought Jacob and I were asleep, Gina left her bedroom and went to sleep in the old toolshed at the back of the yard. When I looked in the toolshed, I found the extra blankets and Melanie, Gina’s younger sister.”
“And that’s where the extra food had gone,” Whitney guessed.
“Yes. Gina was afraid to tell us about Melanie. She had been betrayed by her adult caretakers so badly, she no longer felt she could trust anyone.”
“How was she betrayed?” Whitney asked.
“Gina’s new stepfather was making sexual advances to her. He threatened that if she didn’t cooperate, he’d go to her little sister.”
“Where was the girls’ mother?” Whitney asked.
“She had remarried this man just months after the girls’ natural father had died. Gina said her natural dad had loved her and her sister, but her mother had always been distant. When Gina told her mother about what the stepfather was trying to do, she screamed at Gina and beat her with a broom, accusing her of making it all up. She warned Gina that if she ever repeated such lies again, she’d kick her out of the house.”
“What an incredible imbecile!” Whitney said. For the first time Adam heard anger in her normally mellow voice. Its fierceness surprised him.
“Yes, and it cost her her daughters. Jacob and I had learned our lesson with Joe. We couldn’t risk returning the girls to that home. We talked it over and told Gina and Melanie that they were welcome to live with us for as long as they liked.”
“Good for you,” Whitney said immediately. Adam could tell she meant it, too.
“It was dangerous, of course, Whitney. If caught, we could be charged with kidnapping. But when I saw the tears of relief in Gina’s eyes as she hugged her little sister and then us, I knew we were doing the right thing.”
“You sure were,” Whitney said, sending Esther a big smile. Adam rather felt at that moment that Esther and Whitney had forgotten he was in the room.
He didn’t mind. He enjoyed watching the openness and honest warmth flowing between these two women. He had never seen respect or trust develop so fast. Whitney had that indefinable quality that invited both. He knew it was because of Whitney’s presence here today that Esther was even telling her story.
“The girls’ mother and stepfather lived in Kingston,” Esther continued. “Gina had gotten herself and Melanie to Seattle by taking the ferry across Puget Sound. I realized the authorities might figure they came to Seattle when they didn’t find them on the other side.
“I dyed the girls’ hair red and cut it short. I bought them glasses with thick rims and plain lenses. I took them shopping for clothes with extra padding to make them look fatter. I told everyone that they were my sister’s children and had come to live with me because she had passed away.
“Jacob made them dummy birth certificates with new names. Enrolling them in school was the difficult part, because they had no transcripts. Jacob explained that away by telling the principal that my sister had been an eccentric schoolteacher and had insisted upon teaching the girls at home.”
“Did it work?” Whitney asked.
“Exceptionally well. Only then we were invaded.”
“Invaded?” Adam repeated.
“Gina and her sister had been living on the street in a grocery-store carton for two days before she applied at that theater for a job. There were other street kids out there who knew about the girls. Word got around that they had found a safe, secure home. Soon they were showing up on our doorstep.”
“More runaways?” Whitney guessed.
Esther nodded. “In a month’s time we had eight of them bunking at the house. They needed food, shelter, a warm, safe place. Plus many of the youngsters had been traumatized by their brutalizing experiences and desperately needed counseling—and love. I couldn’t turn them away.”
“Of course you couldn’t,” Whitney said.
“By then I’d stopped going to our office and was staying home with the kids. Establishing new identities and integrating the girls into the family had not been an easy thing. We knew we couldn’t do it with eight more kids. It was while I was trying to think of what to do that social services raided us.”
“Raided you?” Whitney repeated, her voice clearly alarmed.
“We told the social-services worker that the eight kids huddled around sleeping bags in the living room were visiting friends of our daughters, Gina and Melanie.
“She looked at their faces and their clothes. The children were clean, but Jacob and I hadn’t been able to afford new clothing for them. One by one she asked the kids their names and addresses. One by one they gave fictitious names and addresses. The social-services worker wrote down what they said and then she went away.”
“She believed you?”
“Not for a minute. The kids told us. Their harsh experiences had taught them to read people very well, particularly people in authority.”
“What happened?” Whitney asked.
“The social worker was back in an hour with two policemen to round up the kids. Only, by then the kids were gone, except for Gina and Melanie, of course. When the social worker asked where the other kids were, Jacob and I looked her straight in the eye and told her they had gone home. I never knew I could lie so straight-faced. Or that I could feel so proud doing it.”
Whitney gave Esther another hug. “What did the social worker do?”
“Oh, she made some threats and talked the two police officers into watching the house for the next few days. But after that she gave up.”
“And the kids?”
“As soon as the police left, they came back. Jacob sold our life-insurance policies to get the children new clothes and add another bedroom and bathroom to the house. But before the construction could begin, one of the policemen who had been with the social-services worker dropped in unannounced and caught us with all the kids at dinner one night.”
“Oh, no,” Whitney said. “What did you do?”
“Jacob stood up and told the policeman he would fight him if necessary to keep the children from being returned to the adults who had abused them. You must understand, Whitney, Jacob is only five-five, slenderly built and a very gentle man. He had never been in a fight before in his life. He knew he never had a chance when he stood up to that big, burly policeman. But I was never so proud of him. That night my Jacob became the tallest man in the world to me.”
Adam watched as Esther wiped away a proud, bright tear from the corner of her eye. Without having ever met him, Adam envied Jacob Rubin very much at that moment. Whitney’s eyes were swimming, too. She was not reticent about showing her feelings. Adam respected that in her, because he respected the feelings he was seeing.
“Please tell me your husband didn’t have to fight the policeman,” Whitney said.
“No, he didn’t fight him. We had the policeman all wrong. His name was Patrick and he wanted to help. He had talked it over with his wife. They wanted to take one of our runaways into their home to raise with their children.”
“To adopt the child as you adopted Gina and Melanie?” Whitney asked.
“No, Patrick drew the line at paper forging. He and his wife simply wanted to take care of one of the runaways and keep quiet about where he came from. A month later Patrick brought over another couple who wanted to give one of our runaways a home and were willing to keep our secret. And thus began the solution to our problem.”
“You placed the runaways in unofficial foster homes,” Whitney said.
“Yes. Not that it didn’t present some significant problems. They needed schooling, and without birth certificates and transcripts, the public system was out. So I started conducting academic classes
, as well as therapy sessions, here at the house. The foster parents dropped the kids off for their therapy sessions and schoolwork during the week and picked them up to return to their foster home for the night and weekends.”
“What an ingenious plan,” Whitney said appreciatively.
“Still, it seemed like we’d no sooner get our last runaway placed, when another would appear on the doorstep. Then one day one of those runaways was a young girl with long golden hair and big violet eyes—the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.”
Adam shot forward in his chair. “Excuse me, Dr. Rubin. Are you saying that Patrice was one of your runaways?”
“Yes, Mr. Justice,” Esther Rubin said, her dark eyes coming to rest fully, sadly, on his face. “And, without a doubt, my most difficult challenge of all.”
Chapter Seven
“Why did you call Patrice your most difficult challenge?” Whitney asked while Adam was still trying to get over his surprise at what he had heard.
“Her beauty was like a magnet. It drew everyone who saw it. One glance and a smile, and the runaway boys at the house were tripping over themselves to do things for her. The first two couples who came to the house after she arrived actually got into a heated argument over who would get her. Nothing like that had ever happened before.
“Even my Jacob found himself captivated by her. He refused to let either of the would-be foster parents take her. He wanted to make Patrice one of our daughters, as we had Gina and Melanie. He was as smitten with Patrice as everyone else who saw her. For the first time since I started taking in runaways, I sensed we were in real danger.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by danger,” Whitney said.
“How can I explain? With her beauty, with her angelic smile, with the soft melody of her voice, she went about enticing my Jacob away from us. When he got home each night, she would take him the newspaper, get him his slippers, ask him about his day. Jacob began ignoring me and our daughters, so eager was he to please the lovely creature who seemed to need him so badly as she sat at his feet looking up at him adoringly.”
“How old was Patrice then?” Whitney asked.